Major Internet service providers (ISPs), home networking equipment manufacturers, and web companies around the world are coming together to permanently enable IPv6 for their products and services by 6 June 2012.

Organized by the Internet Society, and building on the successful one-day World IPv6 Day event held on 8 June 2011, World IPv6 Launch represents a major milestone in the global deployment of IPv6. As the successor to the current Internet Protocol, IPv4, IPv6 is critical to the Internet's continued growth as a platform for innovation and economic development.

Search giant Google has once again updated the Chrome Dev Channel and released two new Chrome builds, version 18.0.1010.0 for Mac and Linux, and 18.0.1010.1 for Windows. According to their maker, these builds include the following updates:

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- The PDF plugin now adds 'Rotate Clockwise' and 'Rotate Counterclockwise' commands to context menus, so users can more easily view documents scanned horizontally.
- Updated the first-run bubble text and added a link to change the current search engine.
- Fixed HTML5 showing download bar in fullscreen mode.

The highly controversial SOPA & PIPA bills currently being rushed through Congress by Big Media are encountering ever more opposition from minor and major players alike, such as Google. Now gog.com, owned by parent company CD Projekt RED, has come out against these bills too and are one of many games companies to do so. They address the questions of "will it work?" and "will it stop piracy?" with the answers being sort-of and no.

Keeping the Chrome crowd well-stocked on new releases, Google has made available a couple of versions of its browser, the 16.0.912.75 (Stable channel) and 17.0.963.26 (Beta channel).

The new Chrome 16 build is a security update which comes to fix three vulnerabilities rated 'High', while the first Chrome 17 release brings quite a few fresh goodies like New Extensions APIs, Omnibox Prerendering (the browser will load a website in the background while you type in the URL), enhanced download protection, and a few tweaks.

Both Chrome 16.0.912.75 and 17.0.963.26 are available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux and can be downloaded via this page.

The draconian internet censorship bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) being lobbied for by wealthy big media corporations (mostly fronted by the RIAA/MPAA, News Corporation and the like) and currently being debated in Congress is still losing support wherever one turns. A week ago, we reported that GoDaddy initially supported it, but soon changed its mind as it immediately began to haemorrhage customers. Now, it turns out that many video games companies are also coming out against it and with no pressure against them required.

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is the game industry's trade association and stands firmly behind the much-despised bill, which means that the gaming industry as a whole is deemed to support SOPA. However, while some members openly support it, others just won't say so publically and some of its members actively do not support it, having made official statements to this effect. Here are just three of them:

After overtaking Mozilla Firefox in terms of web-browser market-share in December 2011, Google Chrome has its eyes trained on Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE), still the most popular web-browser in use today. According to the most recent StatCounter figures, at the rate at which Google Chrome's market-share is growing, it will overtake that of MSIE in 2012. It will do that as early as in June-July. Interestingly, Google Chrome is the youngest web-browser among its competitors, launched in Q4 2008, but has surpassed the market shares of much older competitors in a matter of months. Apart from stats, Google's web-advertising prowess makes Chrome's MSIE overtake in June-July seem realistic.

According to Paul Allen, the self-proclaimed 'unofficial statistician' of Google+, Google's social project continued to see solid, double-digit growth in December, and managed to surpass 62 million users just after Christmas.

Given the current (estimated) sign-up rate of 625,000 per day (as a comparison, Andy Rubin confirmed about a week ago that Android as a platform has 700,000 activations/day), Google+ can reach 100 million users by the end of February (2012). But apparently this is just the tip of the sign-up iceberg…

In what could be a sign of improving ties between Google and Mozilla, Peter Kasting, engineer in the Google Chrome web-browser development team referred to Mozilla as a partner, and not a competitor. The statement came in context of the recently-renewed search engine deal between the two, where Google pays Mozilla for setting Google as its primary search engine, both on its browser search bar, and its Firefox start page. Kasting also went to the extant of stating that Chrome isn't necessarily a profit-seeking operation by Google.

Kasting stated: "People never seem to understand why Google builds Chrome no matter how many times I try to pound it into their heads. It's very simple: the primary goal of Chrome is to make the web advance as much and as quickly as possible. It's completely irrelevant to this goal whether Chrome actually gains tons of users or whether instead the web advances because the other browser vendors step up their game and produce far better browsers. Either way the web gets better. Job done."

On Tuesday, Google announced in its official blog that it invested another $94 million in a portfolio of four solar photovoltaic (solar cell) projects. These are being undertaken by Recurrent Energy near Sacramento, California. The investment brings Google's portfolio of clean energy investments to $915 million, nearing the $1 billion mark. By the end of 2011, Google will have helped fund 10,000 homeowners set up solar PV panels on their rooftops. Google is investing alongside global investment firm KKR and Recurrent Energy, a leading solar developer. The energy produced by these projects is already contracted for 20 years with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), and is governed by a feed-in tariff program (FIT), which adjusts homeowners' utility bills by balancing how much their PV panels feed into the grid, and how much the homeowners draw from it.

Google has kicked off this week by initiating the roll-out of a new update for Google+, one that brings some highly-desired features while also improving those already available. First up, Google is adding a slider to every Circle so people can choose how much information from that Circle reaches their main stream. This basically allows users to limit the updates going to the stream, making it more focused on things of greater importance (less spam for everyone).

Notifications are also getting a boost thanks to the arrival of 'sneak previews' and the ability to see the +1's and shares received by posts. As for Photos, they can take advantage of a redesigned Lightbox which allows for 'improved navigation, enhanced comment legibility and better overall utility'. Photo tagging has also been improved and is now faster and easier.

Google Chrome is a fast and functional web browser. Let's get that out of the way first. But one of the main reasons a largely successful corporation put resources into developing a web-browser into a market that isn't very profitable, is cost-cutting. Since it's inception, the search bar Mozilla Firefox came with, has Google as its default search provider. Every time people search using that search bar in Firefox, Mozilla Foundation makes money. It is estimated that these Google searches amount to a majority of Mozilla's revenue, as Google pays it as much as 50 million dollars an year. Google Chrome, despite its genuine merits, is a cost-cutting operation. The more people use it over Firefox, the less Google has to pay Mozilla.

Web security researchers have historically rated Google Chrome has having the worst security and privacy compared to Firefox, and Internet Explorer (read this, and here), but the most recent research by Denver-based security consultancy Accuvant claimed that Google Chrome has the best security and privacy features, while Mozilla Firefox has the worst. Want to hear the kicker? That research by Accuvant was funded by Google. Want to hear another one? A similar research firm that has historically done vendor-funded research, NSS Labs, voiced strong objections to Accuvant's research, calling it an all-out attempt to malign Mozilla Firefox.

Dublin-based web analytics firm StatCounter has announced that the end of November saw Google's Chrome 15 become the most popular browser version worldwide for the first time on a weekly basis. In the last full week of November, Chrome 15 managed to take 23.6% of the global browser market, inching in front of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 which had a 23.5% share. Better yet, for Google at least, in the first week of December Chrome 15 topped 24.55% while IE8 slipped to 22.16%.

These results don't change the big picture though, so Internet Explorer (with all its still working versions) continues to be the number one browser worldwide, while Chrome is on the second spot. Chrome 15's performance is certainly noteworthy but it should be short-lived since Google this week released the stable 16.0.912.63 build and people are likely upgrading to it as we speak. It remains to be seen if Chrome 16 will get the browser crown like its predecessor.

A new 'stable' build of Google's browser is now available to the masses and it offers one fresh feature - multiple profiles. This addition allows a single instance of Chrome to handle several user profiles and enable easy switching between them. This is great for shared PCs as it enables people to quickly access their bookmarks, apps, extensions, history, and other settings, but it's not really suited for those who like their privacy.

Beside multiple sign-in support, Chrome 16.0.912.63 comes with Sync enhancements and multiple bug fixes. This stable build is available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux.

India's United Progressive Alliance government is mulling censorship of the internet à-la China, to filter out any content that speaks against members of the ruling party. India's multi-partisan democracy is increasingly making use of the web as a medium of political discourse and exchange, something that only works to make voters more informed. Union minister of IT and Telecommunications Kapil Sibal kicked off a storm this week when he announced that he is in talks with representatives of search engines and social networking websites, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and Microsoft to work out a censorship model that filters content that "unfairly maligns" the government. Apart from anti-government content, the government is concerned about hateful or "blasphemous" content, which could disturb communal harmony. "Some of the content which is being carried is blasphemous. This can hurt religious sentiments and it has to be removed," Sibal said.

Google, fresh out of a censorship and GMail espionage tussle with China, stated that it will not remove any content from its search results that are legal, merely on grounds of being "controversial". "We work really hard to both follow the law and also give people as much access to information as we can. So we follow the law when it comes to illegal content. And even where content is legal but breaks our own terms and conditions we take that down too, once we've been notified about it," said Google in a statement. "When content is legal but controversial we don't remove it because people's differing views should be respected, so long as they are legal."

According to the latest data sourced by StatCounter for the month of November 2011, Google Chrome has overtaken Mozilla Firefox in terms of web-browser software market-share. The GlobalStats data provides a worldwide picture, and not just specific to a region. According to the data, Chrome took 25.69% of the worldwide market (up from 4.66% in November 2009) compared to Firefox's 25.23%.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer still maintains a strong lead globally with 40.63%. Google Chrome began in mid-2008 as an experimental minimalist UI web-browser based on the Chromium project, it is a multi-process tabbed web browser based on Apple Webkit and several other pieces of free, licensed, and open-source technologies. Its market share is on the rise. The stats can be accessed here.

It looks like developer DICE has been doing a lot of listening to its customers, as the large number of complaints over in-game glitches has produced an almighty patch, fixing just about everything, including the kitchen sink, while making lots of little tweaks to improve gameplay and the user interface. On top of that, the patch is PC only for now as the console versions are taking "a bit longer due to [the] console certification process".

Bugfixes include such goodies as a "Black Screen" fix for an issue occurring on some PC Configurations; spawn protection improvements; increasing the damage from the 44 Magnum slightly; sharing your profile and stats with new Battlelog functionality; profile integration with Facebook, Google+ and Twitter and lots more. The full list appears below.

Just in time for holiday giving, Samsung is introducing a Piano Black version of its WiFi-only Series 5 Chromebook. At a price of $349, the updated Series 5 is even more giftable than the original.

Chromebook, based on Google's Chrome operating system, is designed to provide people a faster, simpler and more secure computing experience. Due to automatic software updates, Google has continued to release new features and improvements on an ongoing basis. These new features coupled with the Samsung design aesthetic creates a technology device that gets better over time, offering the best possible web experience in one device for the internet-enthusiasts in all our lives.

A little over a month after releasing Firefox 6.0, and quickly following it up with two minor updates (6.0.1 and 6.0.2), Mozilla released its next "major" version, Firefox 7.0 into the release channel. It is now clear that Mozilla Firefox is playing catch-up with other popular web-browsers in some sort of a version number game. The three year old Google Chrome is already into version 14, with version 16 already in the dev channel.

While Firefox users will not be in for a different user interface (it's bad to drastically change it from time to time), Firefox 7 does seem to come with several under-the-hood changes. To begin with, the Windows version features a brand-new rendering back-end that speeds up Canvas, a tweaked Sync system that instantly syncs changes to bookmarks and saved passwords, support for text-overflow: ellipsis, compliance with the Web Timing specification, WebSocket protocol updated from version 7 to 8, and improved support for MathML. The only UI change is that the protocol of the page loaded is hidden. The full URL will be copied when you copy the address in the bar. Firefox 7 is launched for all platforms it's available in: Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android.DOWNLOAD: Mozilla Firefox 7

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: MMI) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Google will acquire Motorola Mobility for $40.00 per share in cash, or a total of about $12.5 billion, a premium of 63% to the closing price of Motorola Mobility shares on Friday, August 12, 2011. The transaction was unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies.

The acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a dedicated Android partner, will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem and will enhance competition in mobile computing. Motorola Mobility will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. Google will run Motorola Mobility as a separate business.

Larry Page, CEO of Google, said, "Motorola Mobility's total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers. I look forward to welcoming Motorolans to our family of Googlers."

Acer America today debuts the Acer AC700 its first Chromebook in the United States and its first product running Google's Chrome-based operating system. The Acer AC700 ultraportable delivers blazing boot times and instant access to the Internet.

The first in a planned line of products that will utilize Google's Chrome operating system, the Acer AC700 Chromebook is ideal for savvy mobile consumers, educational institutions, and business people that spend most of their time on the Internet for cloud computing such as using web-based email, uploading photos to sites like Flickr and Picasa, and keeping up-to-date on the latest news and events. The new Acer AC700 provides WiFi connectivity, a sleek thin and light form factor, long battery life and excellent HD playback.

ViewSonic Corp., a leading global provider of computing, consumer electronics and communications solutions, today announced North American availability of the ViewPad 10. Giving users a choice between Windows 7 and Google Android within the same device, this 10.1" dual-boot tablet is ideal for maximizing business productivity alongside entertainment.

"The lines of professional and personal life are blurring, which creates a need for devices that are suited for both sides," said Adam Hanin, vice president of marketing for ViewSonic Americas. "The ViewPad 10 delivers just that by enabling users to merge business productivity with personal enjoyment anywhere, anytime. We are proud of our 10-year tablet history and are dedicated to further extending our tablet product portfolio to meet every individual need."

After subjecting itself to the dark ages as Mozilla Firefox, and later Google Chrome started eating into its market-share, Microsoft's Internet Explorer team released version 9 of its [then] iconic browser, which actually kept up with current standards in terms of speed, features, and functionality. Internet Explorer 9 stable will be released to web on March 14, 2011.

MSIE 9 made its first public release in September 2010, in the form of a functional beta, and was fed by the occasional stability updates. It later assumed the form of the first Release Candidate in early February 2011, with a slightly tweaked user-interface. Once it achieves a stable build status, it will be updated regularly under Microsoft's cumulative security updates. Internet Explorer 9 is an "omnibox"-styled, tabbed, multi-process web-browser. Each tab and running ActiveX plugin runs in its own process. The browser is up to date in terms of standards including HTML5, packs a fast Javascript engine, and uses GPU hardware acceleration to draw web-page contents.

Tablet PCs came and went, but "tablets" as a category began with the Apple iPad. Merely weeks after its launch, the rattled PC OEM industry announced plans for their tablets, some being ARM-based and driven by Google's touch-phone optimized Android OS, and some using x86 processors and Windows 7. Unfortunately, Windows 7 based tablets aren't cutting it in the market, and the problem is with the user-interface (UI) itself. While Windows 7 has a touchscreen/pen software framework, its UI is more PC-like. Menu items, buttons with applications, are not very optimized for a comfortable touch-only input device.

Hence, Microsoft seems to be expediting the release of Windows 8 for Tablets, and the software giant plans to do that as early as by CES 2012. Only the tablet version of Windows 8 will be released then, not the PC version.

The ViewPad 7 is a world's first 7" Android 2.2 (Froyo) tablet with phone functionality, multi-tasking capabilities and front and back-facing cameras, VGA and 3MP, resolutions respectively. Within a lightweight, pocket-sized design, this device is ideal for anyone who needs a mobile connection to the world via email and video and wants to enjoy a wide-range of applications.

With full 3G and phone functionality, a full size SIM card slot and integrated Bluetooth connectivity the ViewPad 7 will support instant messaging, text/mms messaging, VOIP and standard voice calls all in a single device. It features an easy to use familiar interface with a G-sensor that reorients the screen depending on how the device is held and access to the Google Android app store featuring over 100,000 applications.

The most popular alternative to Internet Explorer, Firefox, may get an overhaul of its feature-set that could make its performance a lot more competitive with that of Google Chrome. Firefox may finally embrace out of process plugins, and a new rendering engine that makes use of Microsoft Direct2D, with which it can offload a big chunk of rendering to the GPU. While this may not speed up page load times for the bandwidth-constrained, it will certainly make the browser more responsive, especially as web-page complexity grows with new technologies such as HTML5.

As of now, the inclusion of GPU-accelerated rendering is only slated to be in the form of an alpha release, which could make it to a stable release around an year's time, and not part of Gecko's next release, version 1.9.3. A stable Firefox based on Gecko 1.9.3 will be released only by October. Developers hope that the next release of Gecko will be able to include GPU-accelerated rendering. The other major feature addition is out-of-process plugins. Not to be confused with multi-process rendering, out-of-process plugins feature runs plugins such as Adobe Flash, Adobe Acrobat, Sun Java, Microsoft Silverlight, etc., in processes separate from the browser's main process. So in case there is an erratic page element, it could be ended without crashing the entire browser. Developers aim to have a stable release with this feature by the end of this quarter on both Windows and Linux, with a Mac release a little later.